


The Silver Fang

by Jorque



Series: The Silver Fang [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Hatake Kakashi, Gen, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Minato is trying, Self-Indulgent, Training, like he's straight up overpowered, so much training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25063786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jorque/pseuds/Jorque
Summary: Kakashi doesn't follow Obito to rescue Rin, and this time only one member of Team Minato returns from Kannabi Bridge. In which Kakashi's grief changes him, but does not shatter him, and a legend even greater than the copy-nin is born.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Namikaze Minato
Series: The Silver Fang [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815892
Comments: 24
Kudos: 242





	The Silver Fang

Kakashi sped through the bamboo forest, faster now that he didn’t have his teammates with him. The words of his deadlast teammate echoed through his head with every leap.

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

Against his will, Kakashi could feel the idea worming its way into his thoughts. It was an idea he had forbidden himself from entertaining. If his father had been a hero, then why had he left him? He should have lived on, defended his position. No, Obito was wrong.

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

_The White Fang had saved his friends,_ a traitorous voice in his head added. Isn’t that what Konoha was all about? Dedication to one’s teammates? But, the mission… the rules…

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

The rules _explicitly state_ that the mission comes above all else. His father knew that. He had made his choice, and he chose wrong. Obito was wrong. Obito _had_ to be wrong.

 _He was put in an impossible position,_ the voice whispered, and Kakashi was horrified to realize it sounded like a younger version of himself. He pushed himself to go faster, hoping desperately that the whistling of the wind around him would drown out the thoughts in his head.

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

The White Fang _couldn’t_ be a hero. He had caused the _war_ , the same war that had put Kakashi in this situation in the first place. It was an easy choice, three teammates or a war. His father had been emotional, irrational. His father was a _fool_.

The damned voice _wouldn’t shut up._ _Father was a genius._ _War was coming anyway. He knew it. The village knew it. So do you_.

Kakashi stopped on the next branch he landed on, almost collapsing against the trunk of the great tree. His chest heaved with emotion. He felt tears threatening to spill, and bit back a scream. _No! A shinobi did NOT show emotion!_

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

He punched the bark next to him. It was as hard as iron, and he used the pain to refocus himself. _My father was a_ fool. _He tarnished the name of our clan_ . _If he was a hero, then why did no one agree? What would that mean I have been doing all these years?_ Kakashi’s eyes vision blurred again, and he found himself recalling quiet nights curled up in the family compound, tucked against his father’s warm body on the couch as the man quietly read a book. He remembered the man teaching him how to hold a kunai with a smile on his face, telling him how proud he was of his pup.

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

Kakashi could feel his resolve cracking, and when he drifted back out of his recollections he realized he had turned around without knowing it. He felt the beginnings of small warmth inside him when he dared to believe that maybe his father hadn’t been a traitor, an ember where there had once been a roaring fire but had been cold and dead for years.

In another world, Kakashi would leap off the branch back towards his team. He would arrive in time to save a girl but lose a boy, and he would leave with a new eye and a new perspective. In another world, he would reinvent himself in honor of the boy who changed his life. In another world, Kakashi would allow himself to agree.

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

In this world, a squirrel snapped a twig.

Such a tiny sound, so quiet but so loud in the death-like silence forest. A twig that, to Kakashi’s reminiscing mind, sounded like a can hitting a wall. One can of dozens, and memories again flashed before the young genius’s eyes, but this time they haunted him. Cans thrown against the compound’s walls, faceless villagers spitting at him in the market. The sneers of the older shinobi about the traitor’s brat, the nights of his father quietly weeping in his study after weeks of trying to hold their lives together. The smell of alcohol on the villagers’ breath as they tried to attack him, and the disappointed _tsks_ of the grannies that Obito so loved as they watched the failure’s son in the streets. The crack of lightning, and the memory of the first time he had truly felt drowned by a scent, the pungent bite of copper when he walked into his father’s study one stormy night.

Kakashi hardened his heart. _I am Hatake Kakashi. I am the youngest ever graduate of Konoha’s Academy._

_I believe the White Fang was a true hero._

_I am a genius. I am a prodigy._

_I believe the White Fang was a…_

_I am not my father. I am not a fool, and I will not repeat the mistakes that lead to deaths of thousands._

_I believe the White Fang…_

_I will clear my family’s tainted name. I will become the greatest shinobi this world has ever seen._

_I believe…_

Kakashi crushed his traitorous thoughts, strangled the voice and repeated his mantra until the ember he had felt was dead and buried once again. The White Fang was no hero, and the thoughts of a deadlast chunin changed nothing.

He leapt off once again in the direction of Kannabi bridge, pushing wayward thoughts of idiot teammates and disgraced shinobi out of his mind. He would focus on the mission. _Just as a shinobi should._

Kakashi arrived at Konoha’s great gates a few days later. He was alone.

When he slept that night, for the first night without the constant adrenaline of the mission, he dreamt. When he woke, his body trembled in the aftermath of a nightmare where he watched Obito’s doomed rescue attempt unfold from beginning to horrific end.

Kakashi distantly realized that he was hyperventilating, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. _Kami, what did I do?_

The village was in noticeably brighter spirits in the following weeks. With the destruction of Kannabi Bridge, Iwa’s forces were left severely weakened by the lack of supplies. Great gains were made on the front, and rumours were abound that it was now only a matter of time before Iwa would be forced to surrender. At the center of many of those rumours was one Hatake Kakashi, the son of the failure.

The chunin who took Kakashi’s mission report had made it exactly six hours before getting drunk and spilling the tale of the mission to whatever shinobi would listen at some no-name bar, and from there the story spread like wildfire.

Suddenly, the shinobi and villagers who had spit and jeered at the young prodigy had instead been offering him congratulations, several telling him how proud of him they were for making his own path and doing the right thing, and how his father’s mistakes need not define him. (They conveniently ignored how only days before they had been the ones defining him by those very mistakes.)

Among the jonins and older civilians of the village, Kakashi was regarded as a hero, and without the label of traitor attached to him now, his prodigious talents were finally acknowledged by the village at large. Kakashi still heard the whispers, but now they were of how one day he’d be a great asset for the village. He still didn’t feel any better than he did before.

Among the younger shinobi, however, those who had never known the silver-haired boy as a traitor, he had made himself a different reputation, and a new moniker. The distant boy who had proven that he really would sacrifice his friends for a mission. Cold-blooded Kakashi. The Friend Killer.

He had to fight the urge to throw-up in public when one shop owner had offered him free fruit as reward for his success. He had to fight the urge to scoff when laughing academy students fell silent with fear when he passed the school yard.

He had to fight the urge to cry when Minato returned from the front and asked with a slightly confused smile why Obito and Rin weren’t waiting at the gates with Kakashi for their sensei’s return.

He felt emptier than ever.

Minato tried to keep a relationship with his final student, but it was hard. Even when neither of them talked about it, the looming specter of their teammates’ deaths dragged on every conversation and interaction.

The boy withdrew into himself even further, which Minato hadn’t thought possible, but the prodigy was no stranger when it came to exceeding expectations. Kakashi’s haughty arrogance had mutated into a near-total silence. He would answer questions and follow orders, but other than that he almost never spoke. That fiery determination that had always burned in the genius’s eyes had been extinguished. Minato had never seen a child so defeated.

One thing that didn’t change was the boy’s training. He trained harder than ever, working himself to exhaustion and well beyond the point that was healthy. The third day in a row that Kakashi showed up with bags under his eyes and trembling limbs, Minato intervened. Kakashi had been his charge for nearly a decade, and was a surrogate son to him. No matter how painfully awkward some of their conversations would get, Minato wouldn’t allow his pupil to neglect his health.

What Minato had planned to be a fairly simple “You need to take care of yourself intervention” broke down when for the first time in weeks Kakashi had shown a feeling other than vague self-loathing.

He didn’t expect that feeling to be anger, though.

“I couldn’t protect them, Sensei!” Kakashi exploded, whipping his head towards Minato, tears in eyes. Minato was taken aback by the raw emotion in the boy’s words. “I wasn’t strong enough! What’s the point in being a prodigy if I can’t even protect my team?”

“Kakashi, you were put in an impossible situation,” Minato tried to soothe. “No one should ever have to choose between their team and the mission. You-”

Kakashi cut him off. “Forget that, before then! Rin was captured because I couldn’t protect her! I was the Jonin leader on the mission, it was my responsibility to take them home. I- I wasn’t good enough…”

And for the first time ever, Minato saw Kakashi cry. Not even the night he had found the boy before his father’s bleeding body did the boy cry, only shut down for days until he reemerged as an apathetic stickler for the rules.

What followed was an incredibly awkward affair in which a supremely panicked Minato tried to calm the boy down, who was at the same time rejecting and clinging onto his sensei’s every word while trying and mostly failing to school his features to the shinobi standard. It wasn’t either’s proudest moment.

Always one to look for the silver lining in bad situations, though, Minato, in between thoughts of _how do I calm someone that’s usually calmer than I am_ , _why does the universe hate this poor child,_ and _oh Kami help me_ , finally found his in with his charge.

If Kakashi’s turmoil was based on a perceived lack of strength, then Minato would help him grow stronger. 

Minato’s deal was that, in return for Kakashi actually taking care of himself properly, he would train and teach the silver-haired prodigy whatever he wanted.

A month into their deal, Minato had to admit, as much as he felt ashamed to think it, that Rin and Obito really had been holding Kakashi back. He shoved the thought away, as he did with any thought related to their team’s late members, but it was true. Kakashi devoured whatever Minato threw at him eagerly, and Minato's jaw nearly dropped when Kakashi mastered a new A-ranked raiton in an afternoon.

The last time Kakashi was his sole student, before Team Minato formed, the boy was still years away from jonin, still perfecting his taijutsu and basic elemental jutsus. Incredibly impressive for his age, but still nowhere near the level he was at now. Minato had never given Kakashi the one-on-one training they used to have since Rion and Obito had joined them, and he was beginning to regret it.

As much as he tried to push the thought away, he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that, if only he had given Kakashi this training before that fateful mission, perhaps the whole team would have returned. As much as Kakashi felt as though he had failed his teammates in not being strong enough, ultimately it was Minato’s job to ensure that his students were strong enough to be able to fend for themselves.

Kushina was extremely conflicted when it came to Kakashi. She knew Minato would always see the boy as a son, but she had known the last Hatake for only a third of the time that her boyfriend had. And honestly, she was finding it extremely hard to move past the fact that the boy had abandoned his teammates to fate.

She couldn’t blame him completely. From a purely logical perspective, she supposed he had made the right decision. The destruction of Kannabi Bridge was pivotal, and one of the main reasons that it was a near guarantee that Konoha would win the war in the coming months, and it wasn’t something that should have been risked for two chunin. Additionally, Kakashi’s logic that Rin would likely be kept alive due to her abilities as a medic was sound, and it was in fact Obito’s botched rescue attempt that led to a fight and the collapse of the cave.

Kushina _knew_ all of this, as well as the boy’s history, so she couldn't bring herself to put him at any sort of logical fault, but she still. Every time she tried to put herself in Kakashi's position, every time she even thought about abandoning her teammates, she couldn’t shake the gut-wrenching sense of disgust and _wrongness_ that came with the consideration.

Still, when her boyfriend asked her to teach his student about seals, she agreed, if only for Minato’s sake. A few nights a week, Kakashi would come over to their house, Kushina would teach in stilted words, Kakashi would learn in near total silence obviously aware of her feelings, and Minato would attempt to curl up inside of himself and die of awkwardness.

It was something that didn’t come naturally to Kakashi, but he learned. Slower, then he was used to, and certainly much too slow for his liking, but he learned, and he never said anything to Kushina. One day, a few weeks into the lessons, Minato mentioned to her that Kakashi had confessed that he felt as though he was making negligible progress in sealing, and that since Kushina obviously disliked their interactions it would probably be for the best if the lessons were discontinued.

Kushina sighed, and the next time Kakashi came over she made a point to try to be more encouraging. It was obvious that Kakashi was surprised at her change in demeanor, but after a brief glance at his sensei, who was resolutely looking away, he returned his attention to the task at hand and didn’t mention anything of it.

At the end of the lesson, just before Kakashi left with Minato, Kushina offhandedly mentioned that he had progressed further in sealing than many ever would, before turning heel and walking away before she could see his reaction. The next lesson, though there was notable difference in his behavior, something about the boy felt more at ease than he had in all their weeks together. At one point in the lesson, when they were waiting for the ink to dry on a protective seal that Kakashi had wanted to learn, Kushina asked something she had been wondering about for a while.

“Why defensive seals?”

Kakashi’s head snapped up from where he had been staring at the inky spirals on his paper. “Excuse me?”

Kushina gestured at the seal in front of him. “From what Minato’s told me, you’re primarily an offensive fighter. So why do you have such an interest in defensive seals?”

Kakashi stared at her with wide eyes for a moment, before collecting himself and turning his attention back to his seal. “The Shinobi rules state that the mission must always come before one’s teammates.”

Try as she might, Kushina couldn’t help but narrow her eyes at the response. Beyond being irrelevant, it brought back the thoughts she had been trying to put aside during their lessons.

“Therefore,” Kakashi continued, missing her reaction, “I want to learn everything I can to protect my teammates, in order to ensure that such a situation never arises.”

 _Oh,_ Kushina thought, a bit ashamed at her initial assumption about what he was talking about. Then, what he said really sank in, and she allowed herself to finally realize how deeply the deaths of his teammates had affected him, the boy who had always referred to them as weak-links.

From then on, the lessons became progressively warmer, and the two became able to have friendly discussions outside of them. The first time Kushina decided to invite Kakashi to ramen, the boy’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head. The smile that came a moment later, though, was the brightest that she had ever seen on him.

Watching the star’s appear in the boy’s eyes the first time he tried ramen( _“What?! You’ve never had ramen before? Oh, Kakashi, we need to fix this”_ ), Kushina decided that Kakashi wasn’t so bad.

When Minato returned early from a mission one day, he was surprised to see his last student sparring with Maito Gai, of all people. For as long as he could remember, Kakashi had dismissed the boy as a weakling. It seemed that Kannabi had caused the boy to reexamine some of his relationships.

Minato observed them silently for a few minutes, and would freely admit that he was extremely impressed with Gai’s proficiency in taijutsu. It was on par with his own. Kakashi was holding his own with fluid movements and speed, often deflecting or redirecting Gai’s strikes and getting in a small string of hits of his own before retreating, but Minato noticed that every time Gai managed to force an extended exchange of blows, Kakashi was immediately put on the defensive.

The spar ended soon after he arrived, when Gai managed to land a solid kick to the side of Kakashi’s head, knocking him out. The silver-haired boy crumpled to the ground bonelessly. 

“A YOUTHFUL SPAR, MY RIVAL! WITH MY VICTORY, OUR SCORES ARE TIED ONCE AGAIN!” Gai bellowed, before collapsing on top Kakashi’s prone form, unconscious.

Minato smiled to himself, before teleporting the two younger shinobi to the hospital.

When Minato noticed that Kakashi hadn’t pulled out his tanto for a spar in a week, he asked about it.

“My skill with my tanto isn’t great enough for me to use it against you. My taijutsu, ninjutsu, and even genjutsu are all far superior to my kenjutsu,” was the boy’s blunt answer.

Minato thought about the problem for the rest of their fight, and by the end of their training session he had his solution. The Hokage owed him a few favors.

“No, sensei.”

“Orochimaru, please. You’re the currently the best kenjutsu specialist in the village, and it would be a shame to let the Hatake lineage’s mastery of the blade die out.”

“No, sensei.”

“...I can buy you new lab equipment?”

“...”

“...”

“Fine, sensei.”

Orochimaru would never admit it to Sarutobi, but he was actually quite pleased that he ended up agreeing to train the Hatake brat. The boy’s kenjutsu was decent, but the ease with which he picked up new techniques and the speed at which he learned and adapted was something that the snake Sannin had never seen before. Must have been those Hatake genes.

It was also nice to finally have someone to share his interest in ninjutsu with. Sarutobi, of course, cared about ninjutsu, but he wasn’t available very often, and frankly didn’t often give very interesting conversations. The Hatake brat, though, was like a sponge. He had a knack for ninjutsu that few did, and a quick mind that worked in the same way that Orochimaru’s own did. He would often ask questions about whatever new jutsu the Sannin would use in their spars, and after answering reluctantly the first few times, Orochimaru eventually found himself somewhat enjoying teaching the brat.

When the brat used a modified version of a fire jutsu that Orochimaru had taught him only the day before in one of their spars, the Sannin couldn’t suppress the savage grin that split his face. Not that he tried overly hard.

When Minato arrived at the training one day to find his student listening in rapt attention to the young Yuuhi, he just grinned and turned around. He was honestly surprised it had taken Kakashi as long as it had to finally seek out a specialist in the last remaining shinobi art he had yet to conquer.

When the next day he found himself avoiding giant bowls of ramen falling from the sky while he fought his student, he realized that maybe he should have stayed to listen to the young kunoichi, as well.

Months passed since Kannabi, and Minato was pleased to watch Kakashi slowly crawl out of his grief. A dark shadow would loom over his head whenever a villager would speak their approval of his choices at Kannabi Bridge, or really whenever the mission was brought up at all, but between Minato, Kushina, and the small army of other nin who had been roped into training the boy, they had managed to clear some of the gloom surrounding him.

Between the standard cool-down period that followed an extremely traumatic experience (ostensibly out of kindness to the shinobi in question but in reality to keep shinobi from cracking and turning missing-nin), Kakashi’s new found hero-status, and Minato personally badgering the Sandaime to give his student time-off, Kakashi had nearly a month free of any missions. Still, with a war going on, the jonin couldn't be spared from the mission roster forever. Despite their business, however, Minato still made a point to spend time with his student whenever he could when they were both in the village at the same time. Every time they sparred, the boy had grown in leaps and bounds. Minato’s heart swelled with pride.

Eight months after Kannabi, Kakashi and Minato were both present in the final assault on Iwa. It was Kakashi’s first major outright assault, as the boy had only taken espionage and reconnaissance missions until then. Minato killed a hundred Shinobi that day, but Kakashi wasn’t too far behind at eighty. It was the day that Minato’s position as future Hokage was secured, as well as the first day that the name of the Silver Fang was spoken with fear in Iwa.

Kakashi shrugged at hearing it. Minato thought it suited him.

**Author's Note:**

> Kakashi in this story had his original personality tempered and humbled by Kannabi Bridge, but not seeing Obito die and not fully taking his ideology to heart means that Kaskashi didn't completely reinvent his personality like in canon. Or at least, that's what I tried to portray. I hope I did an alright job.  
> So in canon Kakashi was like such a genius prodigy child, graduated and advanced through ranks more quickly than anybody else, other geniuses like Minato and Itachi included. Then... he just stops growing. I think was a combination of the sharingan limiting Kakashi's chakra, him letting his training slip in his grief, and Kishimoto realizing that if that level of growth continued into adulthood Kakashi would be mega-broken. So, with an unabashed Kakashi-fan in the driver's seat... I found ways to get around the other two problems. This was basically my revenge on Kishimoto power-cliffing Kakashi lmao.  
> This was originally supposed to be called Friend-Killer, and would have the same beginning up until the line "Just as a shinobi should." It would then follow Kakashi as he grew up the same arrogant child he had been before the mission, and stuff would happen. Unfortunately, I accidentally made Kakashi sympathetic regretful and for some reason I didn't register that that wasn't what I had planned to do until I was halfway through the chapter, and now I'm too lazy to rewrite it. So take this instead. I still might actually write the original if anybody wants it. Comment below. Criticism of any kind is welcomed.  
> I wrote this in like an hour at 1 am which is my excuse if it sucks.


End file.
